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I have a small but growing board game collection. So far, my fiancee and I have accrued Carcassonne, Love Letter and Pandemic, which we've enjoyed immensely. However, we also picked up Tales of the Arabian Nights and Ladies and Gentlemen and the really strong themes in both these games has really won us over. Which leads me to the question: what are some other games that are celebrated for their strong thematic elements?
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Dec 15, 2014 08:47
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 03:31 |
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Broken Loose posted:Space Alert, Tragedy Looper, Dungeon Lords, Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Petz, Click Clack Lumberjack, Falling, Lifeboats, Netrunner, the previously mentioned Battlestar Galactica, and The Resistance+. Sweet, thanks! This'll take about ten years for me to investigate (and afford) so I'm pretty much all set.
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Dec 15, 2014 11:01
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I'm relatively new to board gaming and am quickly discovering that many games are just a turgid mess. Played Settlers of Catan for the first time tonight. Despite having a relatively decent starting position, the luck of the die pretty much just squashed any chance I had of competing, let alone winning. I only had two moments of any satisfaction - using a Monopoly card to steal 16 timber cards from other players; and getting the opportunity to play kingmaker between two players who were sitting on 9 points. Worst 3 hours of board gaming so far.
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Jan 26, 2015 12:52
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DirkGently posted:Other possibilities (that I have not played but I have heard good things about): Ladies and Gentlemen: a silly team game about being a parody of a Victorian couple. I love Ladies & Gentlemen but I think it'd only work if your group was willing to get into the spirit of it and adopt the persona of a bickering couple. Mechanically it's not amazing but it's hilarious fun when everyone plays as intended.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:38
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Bought Twilight Struggle today, after giving it a test run at the local games shop. Took us about half an hour to figure out the rules and we definitely got some wrong... But it was definitely rad and greatly entertaining playing through history.
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Feb 28, 2015 13:02
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Arabian Nights is basically the raddest board "game." Not too many games out there where I can be within a turn of winning and then decide I'd rather go off and do some other adventures first.
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Mar 9, 2015 12:21
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Zveroboy posted:I'm having a few friends over in a couple weeks for Tabletop Day and I feel that my collection is still missing a sort of grand "centerpiece" game. Something that would last a few hours, get us talking, scheming, teaming up, backstabbing and warring. I'm lookng at A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, how does that play with 4 people? Contrary to other opinions, I've only ever played with four and enjoyed it each time. That said, we house ruled the heck out of it - cut Dorne out entirely. I can see why five or six would add to the craziness of it, but with four we ended up with these incredibly tense standoffs, two versus two.
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Mar 24, 2015 03:00
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Chomp8645 posted:Don't listen to this man. If you do listen to this man however then at least listen to him all the way and house rule the heck out of it. Maybe I just need a point of comparison - we've never been able to get it to the table with more than four.
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Mar 24, 2015 03:53
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Got Galaxy Trucker for my birthday! Sweet! Also got Cards Against Humanity..........
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Mar 31, 2015 01:29
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Bought Sushi Go. Played Sushi Go. Lots of fun was had.
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Apr 16, 2015 08:45
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Can anyone offer an opinion on Takenoko? My fiance loves pandas and thought it looked incredibly cute and if it plays well, I'll pick it up.
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Apr 18, 2015 10:25
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All super helpful opinions on Takenoko. Thanks a bunch. Knowing that it's pretty, features pandas and isn't entirely awful will probably mean it gets a green light.
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Apr 18, 2015 13:20
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Played a totally rad five player game of Game of Thrones last night. Five hours and the game hung on a knife's edge the whole way. Web of Lies popped up in the last turn, effectively making it every man for themselves (no support orders can be played.) I've previously stated in this thread that four player GoT is fun when houseruled, but five player was way better. Lots of shifting alliances. Looking forward to the day we finally manage to crack it out with six players.
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Apr 20, 2015 07:56
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Anyone who has six willing players and Game of Thrones in their collection shouldn't really need any further advice. There are some fiddly rules, but it's all pretty intuitive and everyone I've played with gets the hang of it pretty quickly.
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Apr 29, 2015 00:49
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:After playing a bunch of other board games, tonight I got the chance to actually try Catan. I believe it was with an expansion. I wound up in the most intractable position based on my start that I had to just abdicate. I had thought I had started next to a port where I could trade 2 resources for 1 brick, when it was the reverse. I also had this notion that I would connect based on other people's roads, so I had built my settlements on completely opposite sides of the island. The guy setting up did nothing to really try to tell me that might not work out. A bunch of us were beginners, and he just figured we'd play to 5 and then start over, but everybody else insisted on continuing. I did not have anything that could give me a brick, and I had nothing anybody wanted to trade for some. We had whatever expansion rules in effect that let us play with 6 people. So everybody else was starting to build everything else, and I literally couldn't do anything. When I'd get 4 of something to trade for bricks, the thief would come around and take it. So I had to just give up. I was pretty surprised for how well-regarded Catan was. I was just totally powerless. I just assumed I'd linger behind everybody and try a few of the game features, but I was stuck at the starting point the whole game until I just gave up and started cleaning up. The only thing I could had tried was development cards and just hoped I accumulated the 8VP I needed above my base 2 in order to win, but I couldn't imagine how I could sustain that. It's about as bad as when I played Risk as a teenager and tried to break out with 30 units, only to roll 1's over and over again until they were completely depleted. So all I could do every few minutes was toss some dice, and then just walk off to clean up a little more. Hey that pretty much describes my first and only game of Catan!
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May 10, 2015 09:15
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So, I played Dead of Winter tonight which gets a pretty bad wrap. I was a betrayer and came pretty close to winning - got morale down to 1 before the main objective was completed. I can see where the mechanics of the game aren't much chop, but as someone who thrives on theme, I thought it was pretty rad. I'm in no major rush to play it again, but I won't complain if it gets pulled out in future.
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May 10, 2015 14:21
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Broken Loose posted:The problem is that Dead of Winter doesn't have much in the way of actual thematic conveyance. It just has text on its cards and artwork to match. The tone of the subject matter changes wildly, as well, from gruesome and pornographic to cartoony and comedic. See, I don't agree with this at all. The game seems to be brimming with the sorts of fiddly little rules that make games complex and don't necessarily add anything mechanically, but contribute to the general feeling of zombie survival. Some examples: - used cards aren't just discarded, they go to the waste pile which needs to be cleared occasionally in order to stop morale dropping. - the way that zombies crowd outside the entrances of buildings, which means that you need to roll for exposure if you want to kill them (unless you've got a gun.) - the manner in which new survivors are discovered when searching locations... And how they inevitably bring helpless survivors with them that do nothing but force you to find more food. That's three examples that don't even delve into the text on cards. When you add in the missions, abilities of the different survivors, equipment, different crises and those much maligned crossroads cards, I can't see how you "no theme" argument stands up. We played the beginner's scenario where we had to collect dead zombies to study. Naturally, it led to loads of attacking and lots of dead zombies. We had one guy equipped with a lighter and lots of petrol torching zombies everywhere they sprang up. Another player equipped with a sniper rifle picking off zombies anywhere they wanted. At one point, a crossroads card triggered - one of the players had come across her zombified kids at the school. The choices made perfect thematic sense - she either stays there forever to protect them (and thus is removed from the game) or regretfully puts them out of their misery burning down the school (removing every searchable item from the location.) Mechanically, its flaws were so evident. As betrayer, I managed to achieve all of my secret objectives without raising any suspicion whatsoever - all I failed to do was get morale to zero, and I would have just tanked had the main objective not been completed before I had my final turn. I expect that future plays, where everyone has more than the vaguest understanding of how the game plays, will lead to significant frustration and it probably won't get too much play from that point forward. But to suggest that it's theme is nothing more than some pictures and some text seems highly misguided. I don't see how you could re-skin the game to anything other than some sort of survival game without massive mechanical changes.
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May 11, 2015 00:33
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Kai Tave posted:There's a difference between "this game has no theme" and "this game's theme is badly executed," and I'm pretty sure Broken Loose is suggesting that Dead of Winter suffers from the latter more than the former. If that's what Broken Loose is arguing, he shouldn't say things like "It has, in fact, very little theme at all."
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May 11, 2015 01:04
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Rutibex posted:What he is trying to say is that the mechanics of the game don't contribute to the theme. Like a deck of nudy playing cards, the fact that the cards have naked women on them doesn't make poker a sexual game. Yeah, I understand that. I tend to disagree though. I think the mechanics of the game heavily contribute to theme... Probably so much so that it's detrimental to the actual playability of the game. Anyway this is probably a debate not worth having over a game of questionable quality.
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May 11, 2015 01:31
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I played Sherlock Holmes one time and know the missing building in the directory that you speak of... pretty much wouldn't bother playing it again if that sort of thing is consistent.
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May 11, 2015 08:47
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Sushi Go is light, but totally rad.
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May 26, 2015 01:57
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SynthOrange posted:Ladies and Gentlemen was odd. Picked out because the group got to 8 people and we just picked whichever game that supported it. It's kind of... not good? Basically it's two games in one. Players are divided up into Ladies or Gents, paired up as a couple and the ladies have to shop for the most fabulous outfit for the ball. The gents do all the game work by working the stock exchange and approving their lady's purchases. It was pretty... eh. Funny once everyone got in character but still eh gameplay wise. Ladies and Gentlemen is totally rad, especially with the right group of people. The mini games that are played on each side aren't particularly thrilling, but their purpose is to set up what makes the game so awesome: the baffling, clueless , frustrating interaction between the ladies and their respective gentlemen. Generally, the ladies have a strategy all lined up; the gents, on the other hand, might be working towards something entirely different. Combined with the restrictions on communication (which also help push everyone into a bit of roleplaying), this leads to some hilarious miscommunication. It's not enormously deep, but if you've got six or eight or ten people looking for a team game, it works really well. Especially if you've got a whole bunch of couples together.
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Aug 10, 2015 05:57
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Played two games for the first time yesterday. The first was Intrigue. It was a really interesting, brutal negotiation game where you lie and bribe your way to gaining the best jobs in order to make the most money overall. There were some interesting issues with the turn order - I had the first turn, which seemed an advantage early in the game but then by the end of the game it ensured I had very little bargaining power. The opposite was also true, with the last player seemingly holding a lot of power at the end of the game. Not sure if this is an actual issue with the gameplay or was just how it played out given that it was the first time any of us had played. Either way, it was a lot of fun (although clearly also had the potential to be horrific if we had anyone easily offended by treachery in our group.) The second game was Betrayal at House on the Hill. Seemed arbitrary and pointless, and when the haunt happened, it was basically just one of the good guys and the bad guy rolling dice for five minutes until one side lost. The set up phases seemed a bit creepy and then suddenly we were playing against an alien and its spaceship and gently caress none of it made sense.
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Sep 21, 2015 13:44
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Had a board game sesh the other night. Kicked off the evening with 7 player Avalon. It was all good, but maybe I've just been playing the game with the same core crew for too long now and I've figured out their habits because I nailed it every game. The only marginally exciting thing that happened was one of the bad guys torpedoed a group that would have won the baddies the game simply because he wasn't selected to go on the quest. I knew who Merlin was so it didn't end up affecting the result, but it was nonetheless kind of annoying seeing this guy reject everything because he wanted to go "questing." It was like he'd totally misunderstood that the game is about bluffing and deduction, and instead about going for rad quests. Anyway. Then I got introduced to 7 Wonders in a seven player, hour and a half game. The two who taught the game were abysmal at it (ironic because they're teachers) but after finally wading through their teaching, the game itself was pretty rad. I have no doubts it'd be tighter and radder with fewer players though.
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Oct 27, 2015 07:43
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Played Tokaido for the first time ever tonight. We played traditional Japanese music and drank Japanese green tea. It was the most soothing board game experience ever.
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Nov 6, 2015 13:37
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I got what must be close to the last copy of Codenames in the shops in Australia. Played it 5 times on Christmas day. It was totally rad.
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Dec 26, 2015 00:21
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So a guy I play games with (a friend's husband) revealed himself as a dirty cheater tonight... in, of all things, Codenames. He's insanely competitive and hates losing anything, but especially to his wife. We'd split the teams down gender lines. It was his turn as spymaster (against his wife) and he threw out "soccer:2" as the clue. The board was littered with soccer words - ball, net, cross, pass, probably others I've forgotten. My teammate and I were tossing ideas around, and at some point in the discussion I was looking at our spymaster as I suggested "ball" as a possibility. He looked straight back at me and made the slightest shake of the head to indicate that it was the wrong word. gently caress that, I'm not going to be complicit in cheating with this competitive douchebag just so he wins over his wife. I picked ball, it was wrong, the girls went on to win the game and he was very sour about it for the rest of the evening. I've long suspected that this particular guy is a cheater, but what I found most incredible was that he would reveal his cheating purely on the basis that we were playing a team game.
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Dec 27, 2015 15:06
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Ralp posted:I don't mean during the whole game. "If you are a field operative, you should focus on the table when you are making your guesses. Do not make eye contact with the spymaster while you are guessing." Yeah definitely a mistake on my part, I was just looking around at the people I was playing a game with but I guess it can be hard to suppress some sort of subconscious reaction if you're the spymaster and your team is about to gently caress up. Definitely wasn't expecting to see an overt head shake though, which is why I tanked it. I can only imagine how pissed he must have been as his wife gloated all the way home.
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Dec 28, 2015 00:57
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I've never had a board game get played so incessantly as Code Names. Since Christmas Day, we've played it probably 15 times. It's like board game crack.
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Dec 30, 2015 15:18
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 03:31 |
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Has anyone played Kodama: The Tree Spirits and have good or bad things to say about it? The art looks rad and my wife is always happy to play casual, relaxing games... but I don't want to bother unless the game itself is alright.
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May 22, 2016 08:14
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